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Six Million Displaced by War in Syria

While the West debates airstrikes on Damascus and the Syrian government battles a wide array of rebel forces, the Syrian people are enduring what the World Health Organization now calls the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis on earth. Four million Syrians are internally displaced; with homes either destroyed or unsafe, they have moved to temporary housing within Syria's borders. Another two million have now fled the country, pouring into neighboring countries at a rate of nearly 6,000 every day. Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt are taking in the vast majority of these refugees, working with the United Nations, Red Crescent, and many other charitable groups to provide shelter, security, food, and water. The resources are being stretched thin, after years of a growing crisis, and the approach of winter and threat of escalating violence have many aid organizations fearful about what's to come. Gathered below are some images of these millions of refugees, who now find themselves trapped in desperate situations -- vulnerable, poor, homeless, jobless, and without much hope for their near future.

Mohammad B., a refugee from Daraa, Syria, poses for a portrait in Cairo, Egypt, on August 28, 2012. He fled Syria for his life in May 2011, after he was shot in the face and badly wounded in his hometown of Daraa, the birthplace of the uprising against Bashar Assad's rule.#

An aerial view shows the Zaatari refugee camp, near the Jordanian city of Mafraq, on July 18, 2013. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spent about 40 minutes with half a dozen refugees who vented their frustration at the international community's failure to end Syria's more than two-year-old civil war, while visiting the camp that holds roughly 115,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan about 12 km (eight miles) from the Syrian border.#

Jordanian chefs and Syrian refugee workers prepare food for distribution to refugees at the Mrajeeb Al Fhood refugee camp, 20 km (12.4 miles) east of the city of Zarqa, on April 29, 2013. The Mrajeeb Al Fhood camp, which cost seven million dinars ($9.9 million) with funding from the United Arab Emirates, has received about 2,500 Syrian refugees so far, according to the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates.#

Photographed at a refugee camp near Azaz, north of Aleppo, Syria, on February 18, 2013, from left: Mohammed, 14, who left his home in Marea with his family 6 months ago. His parents were afraid of the shelling and they left everything behind to come to this refugee camp in Azaz. He has not been able to go to school since the beginning of the war, two years ago. At center, Mohammed, 30, who was employed in a fabric factory before the war. Now he is unemployed and living with his wife and three children in the refugee camp, since a Syrian Army jet hit his house in Marea. and at right, Mustafa, 62, who was a policeman for the regime. He left his home months before because of the continuous shelling of the village. His wife died 3 months ago due to a lack of medicine and medical treatment.#

Mohammad, 11, a Syrian refugee boy who was injured during the conflict in Syria, sits in his wheelchair at a post-traumatic care center directed by Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations (UOSSM) in Hatay province, on May 3, 2013. Turkey is now sheltering more than 300,000 Syrians who have fled the fighting in their homeland, most of them in camps along the 900-km (560-mile) frontier.#

Coast guards search for survivors after at least 58 illegal immigrants drowned when a fishing boat carrying people who had been promised refuge in Europe sank after hitting rocks off the coast near Aegean city of Izmir, Turkey, on September 6, 2012, officials said. Dozens of survivors, mostly from Iraq and Syria, were able to swim through the Aegean waters to shore, only 50 meters (160 feet) away.#

Iraqi officials distribute water to Syrian refugees as they cross into Iraq at the Peshkhabour border point in Dahuk, on August 20, 2013. Around 30,000 Syrians, the vast majority of them Kurds, fled the region over a five-day stretch and crossed the border to the self-ruled Kurdish region of northern Iraq.#

Rawan Malek, 4, who fled with her family from the violence in their village, flashes the victory sign as she poses for a photograph inside a tent at a displaced camp, in the Syrian village of Atmeh, near the Turkish border with Syria, on November 7, 2012. Most of the displaced people in the tent camp rising near this village on the Syrian-Turkish border are children. All have fled the violence of Syria's civil war further south. Many have seen violence themselves, some have lost relatives, and most have trouble sleeping and panic when they hear loud noises or airplanes, their parents say.#

Turkish police fire water canon to disperse Syrian nationals who crossed the border after Syrian aircraft bombed the strategic border town of Ras al-Ain, killing at least four people, wounding many others and sending panicked residents fleeing across to Turkey in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, on November 12, 2012.#

A Syrian girl stands behind a fence at Bulgaria's shelter for clandestine migrants near Lyubimets, on August 28, 2013. The small EU state finds it hard to cope with an ever rising number of Syrians fleeing conflict at home. Over 3,100 clandestine migrants -- half of them Syrians -- have crossed into Bulgaria from neighboring Turkey this year, doubling their numbers compared to 2012 and and causing Bulgaria's few temporary accommodation facilities to overflow.#

A Syrian asylum seeker stands on a construction crane in Munich, Germany, on August 5, 2013. The man climbed the crane at a construction site in the morning and threatened to jump, if his family was not allowed to follow him to Germany.#

Mahmoud Araby, 14, poses in his family's container in a refugee camp named "Container City" on the Turkish-Syrian border in Oncupinar in Kilis province, Turkey, on December 24, 2012. His mother, thirty-two-year old Havla Araby struggles to raise her children in the container city, as her husband Camal, 34, is fighting against the Assad regime inside Syria. Havla was seven months pregnant when she crossed into Turkey. Her baby girl Intisar was born in the container city where more than 12,000 refugees are now sheltering.#

A Syrian family travels to Turkey by boat over the Orontes river on the Turkish-Syrian border near the village of Hacipasa in Hatay province, on October 10, 2012. Scores of Syrian civilians, many of them women with screaming children clinging to their necks, crossed Orontes, a narrow river marking the border with Turkey as they fled the fighting in Azmarin and surrounding villages. Residents from the Turkish village of Hacipasa, nestled among olive groves, helped pull them across in small metal boats.#

Syrians who fled their homes struggle to get pillows and blankets distributed at a camp for displaced Syrians, in the village of Atmeh, Syria, on December 10, 2012. This tent camp sheltering some of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians uprooted by the country's brutal civil war hard-hit during the winter of 2012: the ground under white tents was soaked in mud, rain water seeped into thin mattresses and volunteer doctors routinely ran out of medicine for coughing, runny-nosed children.#

A young Syrian girl pauses in the entrance to the apartment she is sharing with other refugees in a poor neighborhood with a high concentration of Syrian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon, on June 27, 2013. Currently the Lebanese government officially hosts 546,000 Syrians with an estimated additional 500,000 who have not registered with the United Nations. Lebanon, a country of only 4 million people, is now home to the largest number of Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict. The situation is beginning to put a huge social and political strain on Lebanon with no end in sight to the war in Syria.#

Migrants, during a rescue operation by the Foscari ship, off the coast of the southeastern Italian island of Sicily, on August 28, 2013. Italy's coast guard and navy rescued about 350 people, mostly Syrians, off the coast of southeastern Sicily, and a port official said he expected more refugees fleeing Syria's civil war to arrive. The navy recovered almost 200 people from a badly overcrowded and crippled fishing boat. Among those rescued were 48 children, including a four-day-old girl born during the crossing.#

The new Mrigeb al-Fuhud refugee camp, 20 kilometers east of the city of the Jordanian city of Zarqa, as Jordan opened a second camp for Syrian refugees after the United Nations said the number seeking shelter in the kingdom is expected to triple by the end of the year, on April 10, 2013. The seven-million-dinar ($9.8-million) camp, which was paid for by the United Arab Emirates, has 750 caravans, a hospital and a school and can take up to 5,500 people.#

Syrian refugee girls stand with a ball during a visit by FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Jordan's Prince Ali Bin Al Hussain, FIFA Vice President Asia, to the Al Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria, on July 6, 2013.#

Ahmed, a nine-year-old Syrian refugee boy, poses with his toy rifle during the first day of Eid al-Adha at Yayladagi refugee camp in Hatay province near the Turkish-Syrian border, on October 26, 2012.#

A volunteer carries a bag of donated items as the Iraqi Red Crescent Society gathers aid for Syrian refugees in the city of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on August 19, 2013. Faced with brutal violence and soaring prices, thousands of Syrian Kurds have poured into Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, seeking respite from privation and fighting between Kurdish fighters and jihadists.#

Abdullah Ahmed, 10, who suffered burns in a Syrian government airstrike and fled his home with his family, stands outside their tent at a camp for displaced Syrians in the village of Atmeh, Syria, on December 11, 2012.#

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon looks at the area for expansion during his visit to Al Zaatri refugee camp, in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria, on December 7, 2012.#

Syrian refugees on the Turkish side of the border, close to the village of Atme, in neighboring Syria's northwest Idlib province, on November 26, 2012. A Syrian warplane bombarded the village of Atme at midday causing hundreds of panicked residents to flee, an AFP journalist said.#

Syrian refugee, Ahmed al Delly, 59, from Daraa, reacts as he speaks about his wife, four sons, and two daughters, still in Daraa, who he has had no contact with, after the prayer of Eid al-Fitr, at Zaatari Syrian refugee camp, in Mafraq, Jordan, on August 8, 2013. Al Delly said that he crossed into Jordan a month ago with his fifth son who needed medical attention after he was shot by Syrian troops. The rest of his family was supposed to follow but they never did and he said he did not know if they are dead or alive.#

A Syrian refugee girl peeks out of her parents' tent at the Al Za'atri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, on August 29, 2012. The pace of Syrian refugees reaching Za'atri camp in northern Jordan has doubled, with 10,200 arriving in the past week, heralding what could be a bigger mass movement, said Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).#

Migrants, most of whom who said they were from Syria, sit on the ground after being apprehended by the Serbian border police, having illegally entered the country from Macedonia, near the town of Presevo, on July 17, 2013. Every year, the Serbian border police catch thousands of migrants from Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere who are trying to reach Serbia illegally. In many cases they come from Turkey, through Greece to Macedonia and Serbia before they reach Hungary and with it, the borderless Schengen travel zone. With chaos and conflict raging in Syria, last year saw a huge increase in the number of Syrians trying to enter the Western Balkans in search of asylum in the West.#

Janda Hussein, a 24-year-old Syrian woman, holds her daughter as she poses for a picture at a detention center in the city of Lubimets, Bulgaria, on August 28, 2013. As Washington weighs a military strike against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, the human fallout of two and a half years of conflict that has sent millions to flight is no longer contained to the Middle East. Due to lack of capacity at Bulgaria's three refugee centers, many Syrians are sent to stricter detention centers which they are not allowed to leave, kept for months behind walls topped with razor-wire and windows with bars.#

Haya Khalil, 8, a Syrian girl who fled her home in Homs with her family due to fighting between the Syrian government forces and the rebels, looks up as she and her family take refuge at the Bab Al-Salameh border crossing, in hopes of entering one of the refugee camps in Turkey, near the Syrian town of Azaz, on August 28, 2012.#

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